


Snowblind and Far From Home

by Dargelos (Dargie)



Category: Hard Target, Religious RPF (implied)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-11
Updated: 2010-01-11
Packaged: 2017-10-06 04:29:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/49676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dargie/pseuds/Dargelos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Our erstwhile heroes get lost in a snowstorm and discover their true natures.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snowblind and Far From Home

The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n. What matter where, if I be still the same, And what I should be, all but less than hee Whom Thunder hath made greater? ~~ John Milton; Paradise Lost

 

The weather was getting progressively worse, the air so full of blowing snow that twenty feet in front of their car seemed another world. Fouchon could feel the tension pouring off his partner as Pik navigated the slippery highway.

"Pull off the road at the next exit," he said. "We can't go on."

Pik relaxed marginally and nodded.

On the way down the off ramp, the car began to fishtail gently, swinging in wider and wider arcs despite Pik's best efforts to control the skid. Suddenly, they found themselves sliding backwards down the ramp. A few seconds later, the car completed the spin and they came to a halt in front of a sign nearly obscured by snow. Only the vague suggestion of shape and color suggested that it was a stop sign. That and the fact that they had indeed stopped.

"We should do that again sometime," Fouchon said dryly and allowed himself a smile. The tension lifted slightly and he asked, "You want me to drive?"

Pik pressed his head against the steering wheel. "I'm all right." He shifted into first and applied cautious pressure to the gas pedal. They inched forward into what must have been an intersection. "Let's find a place to stop."

As if in answer to their needs, a structure seemed to rise up out of the blinding whiteness. "Can you read the sign?" Pik asked.

"Some sort of hotel or motel or something. If you can find the driveway, pull in."

"If I can't, I'll create one," Pik muttered, swinging the big car right towards the building. They parked just outside the front entrance, gathered their things and went inside.

The lobby was dark and quiet. Here and there people sat quietly, unmoving, unblinking, speaking to no one and not acknowledging the presence of the new arrivals. Pik shuddered and followed Emil to the desk where a blank-eyed man in a black blazer handed them the keys to the penthouse They stepped into the elevator.

"I hope it has a piano," Fouchon said as they ascended.

"I hope it has a bathtub big as Lake Victoria."

"I hope the bed is comfortable," Fouchon replied without taking his eyes off the numbers as they each lit in their turn.

"I'm certain we'll manage to do whatever needs doing."

There was a soft "ding" and the doors slid open on the penthouse floor. Both men laughed softly.

The suite was a split level apartment. The main floor was divided into a dining room that would seat eight and a spacious living room area dominated--to Emil's extreme pleasure--by a grand piano and a large, expensive sound system. He took a few moments to flip through the smallish collection of compact disks before he followed Pik upstairs.

The second floor was devoted entirely to the master bedroom with a king-size bed, a fire, already burning cheerfully, in a small but efficient-looking fireplace, an attached bathroom with a huge, sunken double whirlpool bathtub. There was a fireplace in the bathroom as well, and--as in the bedroom--a fire was already lit in it.

Fouchon heard Pik sigh. "Can we stay here forever?" he asked softly just before he went in to start the bathwater.

"If it goes on snowing like this, we may have to." Fouchon picked up the phone in the bedroom and dialed the concierge. "This is Mr. Fouchon in the penthouse; we need a few things. I expected fresh flowers," he said to her. "See to it, will you? And the collection of classical CDs is fairly thin; I'd like some Glenn Gould recordings of Bach and a good version of Beethoven's Eroica. The Rite of Spring as well; again, your choice of recordings will be fine.

"For lunch we'd like one very large steak, rare; one broiled salmon, fresh asparagus, a large bowl of salad with a good vinaigrette and a couple of bottles of wine. Have your steward choose. Anything else that looks particularly good you can send along, as well. Something chocolate is essential." He checked his watch. "Lunch at two?"

"Whatever you say, sir." The concierge had a serene, reassuring voice. "Isn't there anything else I can get for you? More towels? Some bath things?"

"More towels would be good. Whatever you have."

"Right away."

He hung up and followed the trail of clothes to the bathroom where Pik was already lying in the hot, swirling water. "Emil, I could die happily," he said, a blissful smile on his face. "Stop wasting time and have a bathe. Your side's nice and hot."

Fouchon went back to the bedroom to undress. He had just put on a thick, white, terrycloth robe with the hotel's monogram on the breast when the doorbell rang. It was the concierge with the bath items, several staff people with vases of irises, roses and orchids, and planted baskets of spring flowers that perfumed the air of the hallway. Behind them was a waiter with a tray of hors d'oeuvres and a bottle of champagne chilling in a silver bucket..

"I thought I'd bring these up myself," the concierge said, indicating the towels. "And the hors d'oeuvres and champagne are compliments of the hotel by way of apology for the lack of fresh flowers when you arrived." As she said this, her staff swept into the suite and began to place the flowers on every available flat surface. Where would you like the rest? The bath?"

"Perfect." Emil climbed the steps followed by the concierge who was followed by the waiter. "Pik; company," he announced as he opened the door.

The waiter set the tray down on the floor beside the sunken tub then left quietly; the concierge laid the towels over the heating rack and switched it on to high. She deposited a basket of toiletries beside the tub.

"I have all the recordings you asked for," she said, producing a case full of compact disks. "There are speakers in here; shall I put one on for you gentlemen?"

"The Stravinsky," Pik said, tipping his head back just far enough so that he could see her face. "Please."

"Of course. Is there anything else you need just now?"

"I think you've seen to our needs at present. Thank you."

"All part of my job. Have a nice bath; your lunch will be here at two." She slipped out of the room and shut the door behind herself.

Fouchon eased into the extremely hot water with a sigh of real pleasure. "The Rite of Spring" began quietly.

"Emil?"

"Hmmm?"

"Where are we?"

Fouchon shut his eyes. "I don't know, Pik."

"I've been remembering..."

"I know."

"I was dead."

Behind closed lids, Fouchon's own death played over. A spark, flame... "So was I," he said quietly.

Over the sound of the rushing water, Stravinsky's music swelled. Tthe two men lay side by side in the deep marble bathtub, soaking up the heat while the blizzard whitened the air outside their windows. They drank the champagne and ate the hors d'oeuvres, and kissed in a sweet, aimless way that made Fouchon feel warmer inside. Though he didn't like to admit it to Pik, he was uneasy.

At two sharp, the doorbell rang. Pik climbed out of the bath and went down to let the waiter in. By the time Fouchon had dried himself and put on a robe, the dining room table was set and the food was waiting.

Pik opened the wine and poured for both of them; white for Fouchon, red for himself. Creamy pink roses stood in a crystal vase in the center of the table. Their blooms were full-blown and softly fragrant, their leaves a perfect bronze.

Pik and Fouchon sat down, wrapped in thick, white robes, and ate and drank, and tried hard not to think about more than their meal. But the world, lost though it was to them in the whiteness outside, kept intruding. Pik put his fork down, took a sip of wine and said, "This should frighten us. Are you frightened, Emil?"

Fouchon asked him, "What do you remember?"

"Demons. The fires of hell..."

Fouchon smiled. "The Mardi Gras graveyard. I was wrong about that; I'm sorry."

"I know. It's all right. Except...I do remember death. I remember so much suddenly; things from my childhood...and yet, like the other things they aren't fearful to me even though I know they ought to be. Do you understand?"

Fouchon shut his eyes and nodded. "They're not real, I think." His appetite was gone suddenly. Reality was a strange concept when applied to what he himself had just remembered.

"Then what is real?"

In the background another disk began to play and the soft sounds of The Goldberg Variations gave way to a Ravel string quartet that made Fouchon's heart race. Its harmonies prickled along his skin like little, stinging insects.

"Us," he said. "We're real." Don't ask, don't ask.

"Are you certain?" Pik's voice was hard-edged and cynical.

Fouchon stood up. "Come with me," he said and pulled Pik to his feet. "I can show you what's real."

Upstairs, they tore the cover off the bed and fell together onto cotton sheets so fine and rich that they felt like silk against overheated flesh. "Where did we meet?" Fouchon demanded as his hands explored the long torso, narrow hips and hard thighs of his lover. "When?"

Pik's voice was tight. "I don't know, I don't remem... Africa? No. Yes. Emil..." he was pleading.

Fouchon's mouth engulfed Pik's swelling sex, savoring the taste of him. Salt, human taste. Like tears. Something inside his chest began to ache. He could almost see the false memories racing past behind Pik's eyes. How much of their lives they'd created out of the counterfeit humanness they'd worn.

"I don't know what I remember. I can't remember, I thought I could...GOD!" he cried as he arched up to fill the hot wetness of Fouchon's mouth.

Emil slipped upwards into waiting arms. "Let me tell you something, my heart: We have no real memories. I have none. You have none. We are cut adrift. All we are or ever have been is right here and now."

"Because we're dead?"

"Possibly. Possibly it's something else."

Pik sighed. "We should have gone to hell. If there is one."

"Oh, there is, but it's far stranger than anyone supposes."

The two men slept for a time and when they woke, the blizzard still obscured the view from their windows. A box of truffles had appeared on the table beside the bed and Pik grinned. "If this is hell, I like it." He opened the box and began to poke the bottom of each candy to check the flavor. "They taste unnaturally good; here, try."

"I don't like candy."

"I always knew you weren't human," Pik quipped. Then suddenly all the color drained from his face. "Emil..."

"You know me now, little lord," Fouchon said softly. Sadly.

Huge tears rolled down the younger man's face. "No. Oh no. When did you remember?"

"While we slept," he lied. In truth, he'd begun to remember from the moment he found himself sitting in their car in the cold whiteness of his own kingdom, but had pushed the awareness out of his mind over and over again until it became too big for him and he had had to accept it. He was the only god there was in this place.

"Then why are we here?"

"Transition. Don't you prefer it?" he asked gently.

Pik curled up into a tight, fetal ball and buried his face in one of the cloud-soft pillows. The truffles spilled, tumbling dark and glossy over the white-on-white cotton, leaving trails of chocolate, raspberry, amaretto, cinnamon where they skidded and bounced. Emil pulled his still very human lover into his arms.

"I'm sorry," he crooned. "We went too deep, forgot too much. We became too mortal."

"I don't want to go back," Pik muttered into the softness of the pillow.

"If I could set you free, I would."

He felt Pik relax slightly; then the other man turned to look at him. Even for Fouchon, the sight of Pik's eyes was unnerving. He had begun to change already, and pupilless, luminous black disks reflected Fouchon's image back on himself.

"Would you?" asked Pik, remembering himself at last.

"I would hold no one against his will."

A shudder ran through the strong body he held. "An improvement over the previous management."

Fouchon smiled. He liked the Lord of the Flies rather better than most of his other angels, loved going adventuring with him. Beelzebub was the most creative of all the fallen ones with a sense of humor that was nearly human. "The universe is full of surprises," he promised.

Pik pulled free of Emil's embrace and sat up. "Damn, and I had come to like this body, too. Do you know, Emil, human bodies are wasted on humans."

Fouchon laughed and lay back against the pillows.

"No, really. You and I were raised on the miraculous; how can humans know the miracle of spit and blood and shit...he rolled suddenly and trapped Fouchon beneath himself. "And semen," he added, kissing his lover and his lord softly on the mouth. "And the miracles of eating and fucking and sleeping...standing up to piss?"

"Being able to piss at all," Fouchon added, chuckling. "Absolutely the best reason to be human," he joked.

"Oh, I'm going to miss peeing. And fucking. I'm going to miss having a penis; why couldn't we have them?"

"I never thought of it."

"You really are a liar' you like yours far too much to be happy about giving it up. I'm going to the toilet to see what I can manage to pass before I change back entirely." He bounced out of bed and was gone.

Fouchon stretched. The heady rush of blood to his muscles pleasured him and he rolled in the sheets, seeking out the cool spots and absorbing them. Pik's cheerful vulgarity--it would be impossible to think of him as anything but Pik for a very long time to come--made him laugh out loud, and he realized suddenly that he was feeling something that he hadn't felt since the universe was young; he was happy.

And for just a moment his human body couldn't breathe properly. A fear came over him, a terror that this feeling, this sublime, perfect feeling would be the undoing of him. He couldn't be happy; it was somehow against the rules that he would ever feel real happiness again.

He was the great outcast, the great betrayer who made the mark of Cain seem like a dimple on the cheek of a child. Happiness was one of the things that had been torn out of his heart when he and his army were cast out of Heaven.

And the memory of that moment successfully wiped clean any small feeling of joy that might have eased his transition. He grew hollow and sad, not even able to call up the old anger against Him who had asked the impossible: Look on My greatest creation and adore it.

And he had replied: Me Thou hast created out of smokeless fire and shall I reverence a creature made of dust?i

A light dip of the mattress alerted him to Pik's return. "How was it?" he asked mockingly.

"Wonderful. You should try it."

"Many thanks, but it's lost its charm for me."

There was soft, low laughter in his ear and a warm hand cupped him. "Has sex lost its charm, too?"

Fouchon tried for a smile. "I feel certain you could enliven the experience," he said. He was no longer certain if sensation was the subtext to these little adventures or the real reason why he actively went out to recruit troubled souls. The loss certainly made Hell more Hell-like which was the point of the exercise, for God anyway. Stick the needle in wherever it hurts most.

Anger flared; he stiffened. Pik began to suck him and he simply chose to forget who and what he really was for a while longer.

The advantage to not being human was that sex could become a continuous luxury. Hours of every sort of sexual activity they could think of couldn't exhaust them. They began counting orgasms, lost count, started over. Sensitized to the point that a touch could send them over the edge, they wrecked their human shells with their relentless craving. Had they still existed on an earthly plane, Fouchon thought, they might have exploded.

In the end, they lay locked together from nose to toes, covered in sweat, blood, semen, livid with bruises and bites and gashes, and glowing with kisses that tasted like every sunrise Fouchon had ever seen in his long, long life.

Pik's flesh was no longer flesh when he rose from the ruined bed, he was no longer even remotely human. (Save for his shape; on whom was that a joke? Fouchon wondered yet again.) For the rest, he was as if cut from polished hematite, reflective as the shining disks of his eyes. His great, dark wings were folded tight against his back.

"Thank you. It has been another memorable business trip," he said. "Next time, I'd like to be a woman," he said and Fouchon nodded.

"I think that would be lovely."

And Beelezebub walked to the window, the floor-to-ceiling panel of glass, and laid his hands against it. The glass softened under his touch and began to melt. Snow blew into the bedroom.

At the last moment, he turned, raised a hand in farewell, in a kind of blessing on the creature to whom he had given his whole being, and, like a diver off a high board, he flung himself backwards into the ghostly void. For a few moments there was nothing but snow, and then Fouchon saw black wings beating the frigid air.

The loneliness was terrible.

He got up and went downstairs where the piano stood like one of his angels waiting for the master's touch. He sat down and began to play.

Human music. Human invention. Human body still. How that one creation informed all the rest of his world. He wished he could cry over it all, but there was nothing in him but a quiet longing for the one thing he had refused to worship or even to love, the thing that had cost him his place in heaven.

What he knew now--though he would never have shared this knowledge with any of his angels, not even Beelzebub who was closer to his mind than any of the others--was that the truth of his fall was a grand irony. He caught no unwilling souls; he had spoken truly when he said he held none against their wills. They came to him for the punishment they felt they deserved, for the punishment they desired. When they were free inside their own hearts, they left his realm forever. He, who would not bend the knee to man was the servant of humanity's deepest fears. He gave shape to them, substance, weight. He wiped away their sins and sent them on into The Presence, clean and new.

And he had come to love them. The way he drew their music out of the piano was proof of that love, proof, too, the way he held them in his hands and taught them the lesson it had taken him so long to learn: Love is stronger than fear. Had he not loved them, he would have emptied Hell and let Heaven worry about their souls.

There was a time when this knowledge might have been his undoing, but he had become wiser recently, and knew that beyond all that he had known before his fall was a greater plan, one so vast, so infinite that even the beings who called themselves Gods couldn't know the scope of it. It simply was The Presence.

It might be worth a trip to Heaven to talk to the being who called himself God, and find out what he knew about all this. Then Lucifer laughed; no one could keep him out of Heaven now...not that he really wanted to live there any longer. If he had any desire to forsake his own realm it would have been to live on Earth as a human being. That, or to finish his task and to go back to the thing that had created them all, the gods the angels, jinns, spirits, faeries and demons, all the living things, and all the spheres in which or on which they lived their many lives.

As his hands flew over the keys, coaxing the music out of them, his flesh began to glow. He was changing at last; his visit was over. He completed the piece and closed the lid over the keyboard.

There was not enough music in Hell to make him happy, a fact over which he had been philosophical for millennia. He pressed the button on the compact disc player and the disc drawer slid open. He touched the shiny discs and felt the music in them and sighed.

But then he thought that there had to be some way to take the music with him. He picked up the discs one by one and broke them into little mirror shards which he swallowed. There were a few moments of chaos and then the jumble of sound straightened itself into discernible threads. If he listened in just one way he could hear the Ravel, in another and he was hearing Gould humming along with a partita. This bit of humanity, at least, he could take with him.

As he passed the hall mirror on his way out of the suite, he saw his own reflection and was startled by his own reality, a reality which no human had ever truly perceived. What they did see was the Great Betrayer as they had been taught to see him. Some saw the cloven hoof and ram's horns, others simply saw a fallen angel with rumpled wings. Each gave him form and substance according to their own needs. But in truth, this brightest of angels--called even by God the most beautiful creature in heaven-- was a pillar, a whirlwind of white light so bright that had any human possessed the ability to see his true form, they would have had their eyes burned away.

"Has everything been satisfactory, Lord?" asked the Concierge as he made his way down the hallway.

"Very nice, thank you. You've done well."

She smiled at him, a hesitant smile, full of hope. He touched her cheek.

"Whatever you want most; it's yours," he said softly, and entered the elevator. There was a button marked "B;" he pressed it and as the door slid shut he winked at her.

The elevator descended for a very long time. When the doors finally opened on the glowing red landscape of Hell he found a crowd gathered, waiting for him. A chorus of demons greeted him with "Welcome home, Lord!"

Huddled nearby were the souls of recent associates--souls given over to him voluntarily: Lopaki, Zenan and the other hunters, Randall Poe, looking depressed as always, and souls like Elijah Roper and Douglas Binder, won over by pride or avarice. He smiled to see the expressions in their eyes, confusion, anger, hatred and, of course, fear.

"Gentlemen," he said softly, knowing that they would hear the voice of Fouchon, see his face for a time at least. "How nice to see all of you again. I have something special in store for you; I trust you'll profit from your visit."

Beyond the ring of fire, the whiteness of snow.


End file.
